Saturday, August 2, 2014

Surrealism (pt. 2)

In 1932, the artist was
commissioned to paint a 63-foot-long mural in the lobby of the new Rockefeller
Center in New York. The mural was to
capture the spirit of a new generation advancing into the bright future of a
new era and would be titled Man at the Crossroads. Rivera was very controversial for his
Communist views and created an image radically opposed to Rockefeller's notions
of the American future. His mural
attracted public controversy and disapproval during its creation. Before the mural's completion, the Rockefellers
paid Rivera for his services but subsequently banned him from the building and
ordered the artist's unfinished work to be destroyed. Rivera left and recreated the piece in the
Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City in 1934, but he never worked in the United
States again. The finished mural he
called Man, Controller of the Universe.

At the bottom left we see a small
assembly of animals next to a human baby.
An unidentified body is laid across a kind of dissection table while
another, hidden person stands behind an x-ray screen; and the figure of Charles
Darwin stands over them, his face placed next to the screen displaying a human
skull. The x-ray machine and monitor are
fitted with impressive (and daunting) gadgetry that makes allusion to the
Industrial Revolution and modern scientific development of the period. The heavy piece of equipment is made of dark
metal and threatening black knobs which rise at the top like two horns. And if the top of the machine is something of
a "head" of its own (ironically, because its x-ray face displays the
skeleton of a human), then it has been fitted with a hat in between the two
"horns"—a large knob shaped like a Nazi helmet. To the right of this strange and unsettling
scene are a group of interracial children, seated in rows like students in a
classroom. Behind them is an image of
the metropolitan public, poor and rioting, with riot police attacking them on
horseback. The seated children all hold
their heads up to gaze through a giant, telescopic lens that points directly to
the center of the mural. On the left and
above these scenes, rising up from the x-ray machine, is a towering Classical
statue of Zeus. He is brandishing his
characteristic thunderbolt, but his hands have fallen off and a crucifix
necklace has been put around his neck (an inappropriate anachronism for the
Ancient Greek pagan deity). From this
out-of-place, Christianized Zeus pour forth World War I soldiers in gas masks,
carrying bayonets and wielding flame-throwers while tanks and bomber planes
swell the background of the scene. In a
pocket on the left-hand side and centered near the middle is a nightclub scene
featuring a crowd of women wearing low-cut dresses and John D. Rockefeller
(Rockefeller Jr.'s father) drinking alcohol among them—despite his public
support of the United States' prohibition laws.
Moving over to the right side of the mural, we see a Communist rally
underway as Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx, and Leon Trotsky stand around a red
banner. In front of them, a line of
working-class men sits on old artillery materials and the dismembered head of a
broken statue. They also gaze intently
into a giant lens as if expectant of an answer.
Above this scene stands another Classical statue with an engraved
swastika, whose head has fallen off (some of the working-class men at the
bottom are sitting on it). Behind this
statue stands the Soviet community, carrying red flags and organized in an
ordered file. In a small pocket on the
middle-right-hand side is the controversial image of Vladimir Lenin laying his
hands on the masses—and to the right of that scene, a glimpse of an Aryan race
of white-clothed athletes advancing forward.
In the middle of the mural stands a titanic machine with parts
resembling a microscope, an engine, an irrigation pipe, a clock, and a naval
steering wheel. A pipe at the bottom
plants itself into the earth, where a lush and bounteous soil produces plants
of several different varieties, all of which bear ripe fruits and
vegetables. Two microscope trays flank
each other, pointing in the four directions of the mural's four edges. On one tray are illustrations of the cosmos, comets,
stars, and planets; the other tray shows the tissue of the human cell. From one central pipe a mysterious and
powerful hand holds out an orb which, according to the artist, displays the
schematics of atomic chemistry and cellular biology. Sitting in control of it all, the great,
overarching machine of the 20th century, is a working-class man with
a stoic face.

Typical to his style, Rivera lays
out a story in his mural, this one a metaphoric account of the Modern Age. The "crossroads" is a symbolic
crossroads of industry, science, socialism, and capitalism. This heavily iconographic mural tells
Rivera's story of mankind's entrance into the new, Modern Era, and his
symbolism bears philosophical implications on the proposed pathway for man's
continuance beyond the crossroads. The
revolution of Communism occurring on the right side of the work clashes with
the bleak picture on the left; and Rivera's stoic proletarian leads the way in
the center. (In contrast, the mural
which now stands as a replacement of Rivera's original artwork in the
Rockefeller Center is entitled American Progress and contains the figures of
Mahatma Gandhi, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Abraham Lincoln.)